Days between

Back when Jerry Garcia was still alive, after I had moved to San Francisco and then later to Oakland, the abundance of Grateful Dead shows (not to mention Garcia Band and other related family events) made me complacent. I wouldn’t even make plans before an upcoming run. More often than not someone would show up on my doorstep often from out of town with extra tickets at the last minute. If that happened I would drop everything and go, as it was meant to be. If no tickets appeared, then I wasn’t meant to be at that show.

A month or so ago some of my oldest pals, the ones I lived with in a big group house when I first got to SF, told me they have an extra ticket for the Dead and Company 60th anniversary shows in Golden Gate park this weekend.

Dead Heads call the week from August 1 to August 8 “the days between,” named after the last epic Dead tune and for the fact that Garcia was born on an August 1 and died on an August 8. “Summer dies, and August flies, and the world grows dark and mean.”

Here’s the catch. They won’t know till today’s show whether the three-day passes they’ve got are transferable, so right now I have Schrödinger’s Dead ticket for the Sunday show. We’ll find out soon if I am meant to be there.